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Abstract

"Innovative revival of life in ancient frescos-paintings and creation of immersive narrative spaces, featuring real scenes with behaviored virtual fauna and flora." Presented is a case study application on virtual heritage. Ancient pompeian fresco paintings are ‘brought to life’, through 3D animation of their content, superimposed on their real environment. The whole experience will be presented to the user on-site during his/her visit, by means of an immersive, mobile Augmented Reality-based Guide featuring wearable computing and multi-modal interaction. The LifePlus mobile system is required to operate in two main modes: The “sight-seeing” operational mode is designed to support the visitor with location based multimedia information facilitating sight-seeing of the area by provision of both practical and historical information in form of text, images, short movies overlaid on the head mounted display. In "AR" simulation mode, the visitor is exposed to the VR simulation scenario blended into the real imagery of the site.

Artists / Authors

Prof. Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, Founder & Director, MIRALab, Switzerland
George Papagiannakis, Research assistant & PhD candidate, MIRALab, Switzerland
Marlène Arévalo, Research assistant & PhD candidate, MIRALab, Switzerland
Prof. Panos Trahanias , Supervisor of the Computer Vision & Robotics Lab, ICS-FORTH, Greece
Prof. Stelios C. Orphanoudakis, Director of ICS-FORTH, Leader of the Computer Vision & Robotics Division, ICS-FORTH, Greece
Dr. Antonis Argyros, Researcher & Coordinator of the Computer Vision & Robotics, ICS-FORTH, Greece
Stephan Müller, Head of the department Visualisation and Virtual Reality, Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics (IGD), Germany
Didier Stricker, Head of the Augmented Reality group of the department Visualisation and Virtual Reality, Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics (IGD), Germany
Nikolaos Ioannidis, Associate Manager of the Development Programmes Department, INTRACOM S.A., Greece
Ioannis Koufakis, Development Programmes Department, INTRACOM S.A., Greece
Sofia Tsekeridou, Development Programmes Department, INTRACOM S.A., Greece
Dr. Andrew Stoddart, Chief Scientist, VMSL Ltd., U.K.
Hélène de Fontenilles, Software Development Manager, ORCHESTRA Software Supervisor, Bionatics S.A., France
Pierre Dinouard, Research and Development Manager, Genesis Software Supervisor, Bionatics S.A., France
Frédéric Banegas, R&D Computer Graphics engineer, Bionatics S.A., France
Prof. Daniel Thalmann, Director of the LIG-Computer Graphics Lab, EPFL, Switzerland
Dr. Marcelo Kallmann, untill 2002 Senior Researcher, Computer Graphics Lab, EPFL, Switzerland
Michael Ponder, Research assistant, Computer Graphics Lab, EPFL, Switzerland
Olaf Schirm, Founder, noDNA AG, Germany
Renzo Carlucci, Technical Director, A&C2000, Italy
Prof. Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, Achaelogical Superintendent, Pompeii Superintendence, Italy
Prof. Eva Cantarella, Professor of Roman Law, Representative of the Minister of Culture in the board of The Italian National Institute for Ancient Drama, University of Milan, Italy

Origination

Switzerland, 2002-2004

Partners / Sponsors

The Consortium is led by FORTH (Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas) for the financial and administrative aspects and by MIRALab (University of Geneva) for the technical aspects and both will share the responsibilities for the overall Project Management and Administration. In LIFEPLUS there are 11 industrial and research leading partners including FORTH and MIRALab, which bring together their complementary expertise to push the state of the art in Augmented Reality Technology and its novel applications. RESEARCH partners: FORTH (Image Vision, Camera Tracking); UNIGE, MIRALab (Real-time virtual human hair, real-time clothes and facial emotion expression, Realistic skin rendering, Multi-resolution mesh); EPFL - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, VR-Lab (Artificial life methods for Behavioural Animation of groups, Middleware integration); IGD Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics (AR-autoring tools, Camera tracking); TECHNOLOGY providers: INTRACOM (Mobile On-site AR guide); VMSL Ltd. (Real-time match moving); Bionatics S.A. (Real-time virtual plant simulation); noDna A.G. (3D Character modelling, Virtual Character-based Installations); A&C 2000 S.R.L., AEC (Geographical Information Systems techniques); USERS GROUP: University of Milan, UNIMI (Content providers of Pompeian life-style, Evaluation); Archaelogical Superintendence of Pompeii, SOPRIN (Ancient Pompeii Demonstrators, Evaluators)

URL

» http://www.miralab.u…ifeplus/HTML/home.htm

Comment

LifePlus is an ongoing IST project financed by the European Commission (No: IST-2001-34545).
Total cost: 279.257 Euro.

Although initially targeted at Cultural Heritage Centres, the paradigm is not limited to such subjects, but encompasses all types of future Location-Based Entertainments, E-visitor Attractions as well as on-set visualisations for the TV/movie industry.

MIRALab is involved in another European project that just began: Erato. By this project the concept of architectural heritage will be broadened to cover both acoustical and visual components. Moreover the real-time 3D audio-visual integration in virtual environments with virtual interactive humans will create a specific and interesting product. This product could be used both in the scientific research and in the media. To reach the goals of this project some of the architectural monuments of Jordan and Turkey will be utilised for identification and conservation purpose. Similar monuments of cultural heritage are found in most of the Mediterranean countries, following the extension of the Roman Empire. So, some monuments in France and Italy may also be utilised in the project.

Submission

, Mar 10, 2004

Keywords

Topics:
- culture mediation |
- wearable computing |
- animation |
- tracking |
- augmented reality |
- realtime rendering
Formats:
- 3D |
- computer animation
Technology:
- motion tracking |
- GPS

LifePlus

Virtual life in Pompei